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La nuit : Imaginaire et réalités nocturnes dans le monde gréco-romain

2018; Classical Association of Canada; Volume: 72; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Francês

10.1353/phx.2018.0006

1929-4883

Silvia Montiglio,

Classical Antiquity Studies

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 373 does not discuss the workings of those devices at all, even while she speculates about the mechanisms of the giant snail commissioned by Demetrius of Phaleron, described in almost no detail by Polybius (192–193). This book might have been an opportunity to communicate contemporary scholarship on ancient science and technology, especially Sylvia Berryman’s groundbreaking and nuanced work on ancient mechanics and automata, to a broader audience. But Mayor rejects as “literalist” the important distinction Berryman draws between speculative tales of divinely driven artificial creations and the new ways of thinking about automata (and mechanics more broadly) that became possible after the development of mechanics as a science.1 The ideas Mayor discusses about the relationship between natural and artificial life, the forces that govern the growth of new life, and the dynamics of matter more broadly could have benefited from deeper exploration in the context of ancient scientific theory and practice. For example, her cursory descriptions of ancient people marveling at magnets (100–102) could have engaged Daryn Lehoux’s analysis of how theories of sympathy and antipathy made sense of what Mayor calls “sacred physics” in its own context.2 The book’s broader concerns about artificial life would have been deepened by considering ancient philosophical sources on what it means to be or act “lifelike,” both from before and after the development of mechanics.3 Of course any book written for a general audience must draw its boundaries somewhere . But as Mayor consistently elides the known details of ancient technologies in favor of fables and fantasies about things that never were, the book conveys a strong message that Greco-Roman antiquity yielded little other than vivid dreams of self-moving machines, with perhaps a few primitive attempts at simple mechanisms like puppets. By contrast, the modern technologies Mayor compares them to are presented largely as faits accomplis: military exosuits (138), artificial intelligence “based on ‘big data’ and ‘machine learning’ ” (150), and “perfected” electromagnetic levitation (101). The resulting narrative sings an all too familiar Whiggish refrain: we “moderns” congratulate ourselves for our singular scientific and technological aptitude, leaving the Greeks to their “dreams.” Cornell University Courtney Roby La nuit : Imaginaire et r ealit es nocturnes dans le monde gr eco-romain. Neuf expos es suivis de discussions. Entretiens préparés par Angelos Chaniotis. Volume édité par Angelos Chaniotis avec la collaboration de Pascale Derron. Genève : Fondation Hardt. 2018. Pp. ix, 410. Ce recueil d'essais est issu d'un colloque qui s’est tenu à la Fondation Hardt (2017). Les exposés couvrent beaucoup de matériaux (textes littéraires, pratiques de culte, mythes, iconographie, réalités matérielles), une longue étendue chronologique (de la Grèce archa ı̈que à l’antiquité tardive) et une vaste aire géographique (le bassin méditerranéen). 1 S. Berryman, The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy (Cambridge and New York 2009) 24–29. 2 D. Lehoux, What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking (Chicago 2012) 135–140. 3 S. Berryman, “The Imitation of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy,” in J. Riskin (ed.), Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life (Chicago 2007) 35–45. 374 PHOENIX Une préface par Pierre Ducrey, qui esquisse l’histoire des Entretiens de la Fondation, est suivie par l’article d’Angelos Chaniotis, « Nessun dorma! Changing Nightlife in the Hellenistic and Roman East » (1–58), qui fonctionne aussi comme introduction au volume grâce à son ampleur thématique : l’auteur retrace les perceptions stéréotypées anciennes (et modernes, 5) de la nuit avant d’aborder son sujet central, l’augmentation d’activités nocturnes dans les cités grecques à partir du ive siècle av. j.-c. Les forces principales derrière ce développement seraient l’état presque permanent de guerre entre le ive et le ier siècles av. j.-c., la mobilité accrue, la diffusion de rituels nocturnes, les associations privées volontaires, la générosité des évergètes, qui permit d’étendre les heures d’ouverture des thermes et des gymnases, et les...